Sunday, October 5, 2014

The Essence of the Modern Republican Party

Midterm
elections in the United States are less than a month away, and their imminent
approach offers an opportunity to reflect once again on the agenda and behavior
of the twenty-first century Republican Party.It is a party governed less by thinking men and women and their
individual consciences than by a series of interlocking pledges that tie their
hands and compel the abdication of free-thought on questions of the economy,
energy, and the environment.

These
pledges are designed to tie the hands of elected representatives around key
questions of action on climate change and revenue.They essentially require their
signatories—the overwhelming majority of the GOP caucus—to foreswear the use of
their brains.They require signatories
to promise their corporate handlers that they will never take serious action
against climate change or raise revenue for our public sphere come hell
or—quite literally—high water.

But
these pledges only function against the backdrop of the central premise of the
Republican Party, the largest and most fundamental of all its many lies.

That lie
is that “Government” doesn’t work.It is
the lie that the GOP uses to explain its failure to sustain and support the
public sphere.It is the lie that the
GOP uses to justify its roll-back of regulation.It is the lie that the GOP deploys to argue
against intervention to restore equity to economic relations governed by a
class of ruthless plutocrats.And it is
the lie on full display as the party looks to take control of the Senate in
November on behalf of its key constituency, the super-rich and the massive
corporations to which the party is giving the same life and political power it
denies the working class in the United States.

It is a
lie so patently absurd that it is extraordinary that anyone gives it any
credence.But it is worth
debunking.So think about this idea that
“Government” doesn’t work as it pertains to people’s everyday lives.

If you
call 911, someone picks up.If someone
dumps toxins into water, there are consequences.If a house catches on fire, a fire truck will
show up.If you have children, there are
schools, school buses, curricula, and teachers to ensure that they are provided
an education.There are roads that you
can use to navigate the country, and safety measures to ensure that your
journey will be a comparatively safe one.If you need to get away from the city, you can visit a National Park,
staffed by hospitable ranger staff who maintain networks of campsites and
trails.There are publicly-subsidised
universities.Water and electricity are
widely-available.

If you
send a letter, it will arrive at its destination in a timely fashion, as will
your social security check if you are over a certain age.If a river catches on fire, someone is going
to look into that and work out what happened.If the government believes you are a threat it will—legally or
otherwise—monitor your calls and e-mails.If the government perceives a threat abroad, it will use violent force
to neutralize that threat.

You
might not agree that the government should do all of these things, but it is
impossible to rationally argue that “Government”—that series of interlocking
public agencies and representative bodies ranging from Congress down to your
local city library—“doesn’t work”.

Some
people take great umbrage at the idea that the U.S. or state governments should
set a minimum wage to protect people from the depredations of corporate
power.Others get hot and bothered at
the thought of drinking clean water and breathing safe air, so sure are they
that in the absence of public regulation large corporations would ensure the
health of our air and water out of the goodness of their frozen hearts and
stunted souls.

I
personally have a weird thing about extrajudicial killings, torture, aggressive
wars, kidnappings, and illegal spying.

But
because one of the two major parties in the United States denies that
government “works”, we spend most of our time doing things other than
discussing the merit of particular government policies at whatever level of
civil society and their relationship to the public good.Instead, we spend our time on one side or
other of a massive, steady, and well-funded assault launched by the
Congressional mercenaries of the Koch Brothers and their ilk who are determined
to reduce government to the size at which—as one of their hired guns memorably
described—it can be drowned in the bathtub.

Because
the GOP and its backers know that their party is based on a lie, they have
decided that their best bet is to bring that lie to life.

Their
lie and their efforts to bring it to life explain not only their policies—erecting
a vast welfare system for the super-rich and corporate America while stripping
protections and rights away from most citizens—but also their tactics.

Filibusters,
government shutdowns, and bizarre pledges: these are not the methods of a party
dedicated to working within a democratic framework for the common good.They are the methods of an organization
working to subvert that democracy by sabotaging its institutions.They are the methods of an organization which
has lost the debate and is instead trying to undermine public trust in
democratic institutions by waging a political guerrilla war, sponsored by
corporate power.They are the actions of
an organization that is trying to bring its lie to life by ensuring that
government cannot function and fails its citizens.

I’m no
fan of the Democratic Party which, bullied by corporate power and economic
fundamentalists, has abandoned the working and middle classes on most
fronts.Too often the party defends
corporations from scrutiny and backs our government's international terrorism.

But
there are a handful of Democrats who have not abandoned their progressive
roots, and there are other parties to support in those states where they are
allowed to contest increasingly-undemocratic elections.

To vote
for the Republican Party in this or any other election is far more than a
statement of support for any particular policy.It is to be complicit in a project of actively dismantling democracy to
demonstrate its failure to an electorate which will then, if the actions and
rhetoric of the GOP’s backers are to be believed, be stripped of its civil,
economic, and human rights.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.